We have a single t-mobile prepaid account, a legacy pay-as-you-go that wound up with a balance of $145 from my husband annually adding enough new funds to not lose any previously purchased. We will be changing this phone and mine (on AT&T with my son who will be getting his own service in the next couple weeks) to two lines on a postpaid t-mobile account. So I went in and changed hubby's t-mobile account to prepaid monthly plan and spent $45 for an account with data for a month (that he will NEVER use, but at least the money has been spent!). So we still have $100 balance in this prepaid account, that I expect to still be sitting there when we do all out account switching stuff in the next couple of weeks.

Online chat with a t-mobile rep indicated that money in prepaid account is not refundable, and cannot be transferred to a postpaid account. Is that correct? Is there any way to use the balance to buy "stuff" - accessories, etc? (I tried shopping but at payment screen, only option seemed to be to enter credit card info - no way to use account balance, but maybe I missed something...). If I can identify a friend with a postpaid t-mobile account can we transfer the balance to them? Or, is there any sort of charitable program (like phones for domestic abuse victims, that sort of thing) I can transfer balance to so at least I can feel like my funds are doing something other than unexpectedly increasing T-mobile's bottom line?